


the lines of us

by ninemoons42



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ballet, F/M, I watched too much Swan Lake and now here we are, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Music, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Rogue One - some of them live, Swan Lake - Freeform, Tumblr Prompt, mentioned galen/lyra, mentioned spiritassassin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 20:46:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10861773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: What do dancers think about, when they think in the moments before they dance?What do dancers think about, when they're getting ready to soar on the wings of the music and of the choreography?As they rehearse an unconventional staging ofSwan Lake, Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso empty their minds of all distractions.





	1. Chapter 1

He stands in the tiny confines of his dressing room, and the walls plastered over with years upon layers of playbills and cast lists and the left-behind spangles, the benevolent ghosts of the dances and the dancers of the past, and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, and that is so strange and so familiar at the same time, so he clasps them in the small of his back instead and he keeps looking down.

This room is so small that even the barest breath of his exhaling sets the crinkling plastic laid in light-shattering layers to rustling: and that much plastic and that much felt is needed, to properly protect and cushion that which occupies the box that occupies the frankly undersized card table.

Chains and lines and rivers of beautiful silver and sequins. Heavy cloth that sheens even in the inadequate light of the dressing room, many-petaled flowers running extravagantly through the warp and the weft. To the side, another layer of felt, and atop them an odd pair of accessories indeed for this particular thing that he’s going to be doing in only a week’s time: but this entire show has been odd from the very start. 

He remembers watching a production after the manner and staging of Matthew Bourne: the stirring in his nerves, the prickling thrill and wonder in every inch of his skin. The electric eroticism sticking like thorns wrapping elegantly around his neck.

He also remembers a singular woman, in one of her many farewell performances: her makeup exaggerating the long curves of the upturned corners of her eyes, the romantic red of her lush mouth, and every other dancer in her company had overtopped her by far, but when she soared into the poses of the White Swan and of the Black –- all of those others fell away, the power of the dancer more than the stage itself could hold, and she was in her forties!

And the same thought in his mind that has stayed with him ever since he first ventured into that wide wide room with the mirrors lining the walls, reaching up the extra inch to touch the barre:

_The face shows its emotions in its expressions, in the movements of its muscles; the body shows its emotions in its movements and in its gestures. And when those gestures are powered by the body and the mind and the emotions, then they become the steps and the patterns of the dance._

“So when you dance,” he murmurs, now, the words of his very first dancing mistress –- the words of his eldest sister, “dance with all of your emotions –- control your emotions and use them to fuel your dance.”

He runs his fingertips over chased leather, and elegant curves like long wingfeathers. Buckles and spangles, and the snow-white cuffs of a form-fitting shirt. 

From the depths of his bag, he digs out a flat package of plastic and cardboard and stickers. Rips it open. A new pair of off-white tights, to match the never-worn ensemble splayed out in the cardboard box.

There is hardly any privacy to be had in this place, and though he’s one of the high-ranking dancers in the company there’s no lock on the door to his dressing room. And he doesn’t even think about hesitating: this costume is here now, and he’s been waiting to wear it for a long time. 

So he peels away the layers of his street clothes. Three plain t-shirts layered one on top of the other, and thick socks, and worn trousers. Patterns of support tape blossoming around the muscles of his shoulder and spiraling up the length of his left leg. 

In the small of his back and in the space just below his heart, small markings, ink embedded into his skin. He wears his mother’s name with pride, right where the world can see it; but it is the tattoo that he can’t see unless he looks over his own shoulder, or unless he turns his back on a mirror, that he’s worn for the longest time.

A single feather, much like the ones adorning the parts of his costume.

He dresses, and he casts away the cares of the world as he does, the things that leave him distracted and fidgeting and out of step with the rhythm of the music and the cadence of his heart and his mind.

Maybe he’s a little too stubble-cheeked for Prince Siegfried. It doesn’t matter. He can always ask the artistic director for her opinion.

He smoothes down his dark hair, and squares his shoulders: and here he is in his shirt and his jerkin and his bracers, Prince Siegfriend who dances with his sword and without it, and the rich textures of his sleeves.

Last but not the least, he hitches each foot up onto a three-legged stool to do up his shoes. Not flats, not today, and not for the past four or five months. 

He thinks of walking ten turns around his room on the tips of his toes, supported on boxes: because that’s how a pointe ballet shoe is constructed, with a sort of tiny platform on the end, and the entire weight of the body and its muscles and bones supported on that tiny platform. 

Off-white ribbons and garters to secure his shoes.

He looks at himself at the only mirror in the room, and makes a face at the sallow skin ringing his eyes, and then he makes himself head out -– a straight shot from this dressing room to the stage, to the long benches up facing the long benches down.

Movement in the corner of his eye, sinuous black movement, and he tries to fight his smile, and in the end he lets it win out, so he can look.


	2. Chapter 2

She stares down at sequins and tulle, at the arch of wire bent and curved around rhinestones as big as the nail on her pinky finger, at ribbons and lace, and grits her teeth. Holds her breath.

There are words gathering in her throat, and not even she knows what they are: words that shape relief, perhaps, or anger, or mourning.

And she can’t be distracted by the excess energy of her emotions, so: she takes a deep breath, and another, and she lets herself sink rapidly and gracefully to the scuffed floor of this dressing room. Back straight, shoulders thrown back, chin level, and her butt resting on her upturned heels. Hands folded loosely in her lap.

This is not a ballet posture by any means, though she’s found it convenient as a rest position, when she’s not trying to find the right angles and the right arches so her body becomes more than just the curve of her muscles and her bones, so her body becomes an expression of some emotion or another. Emotions only seem to be simple on the surface; the truth is that each emotion is a complex thing, is made up of layers and layers of physiological and mental responses. A fist cocked to strike a table to emphasize a point is not the same as a fist cocked to punch some asshole in the throat. A foot arched into a kicking weapon is not the same as a foot arched to follow the tenets of pointe technique.

Not the words of her ballet masters ringing in her ears: instead she listens to the mantras of her martial arts instructors. There are two of them, spouse and spouse, and one teaches her how to fight with weapons while the other teaches her how to fight without.

She imagines: thinks of wires running through her body, through her limbs and through her joints, and she’s sitting so she’s upright but loose, all the tension of her thoughts leaching out to leave her with the raw unformed energy of the dance, that she can control and she can shape as she sees fit.

Pinned into the innermost pocket of her wallet is a photograph of a man partnering a woman, the two of them in street clothes, impeccably turned out -– or at least, “turned out” in the way Jyn knows in the very soles of her feet.

Literally.

A man and a woman in heavy overcoats and lopsided ski hats, and yet he’s ramrod-straight and poised to spring, while she’s a beautiful arabesque of flesh and bone. Their feet carefully aligned to support themselves and each other, and to create the stable foundation of their positions, all the while alert and knowing that in another heartbeat or two the music will begin again in its familiar measures, following Tchaikovsky’s famous theme.

The scandal had not been that Jyn’s parents had been an item on the stage and off it; the scandal had been that they had died at the very peak of their dancing powers, the two of them the toast of the world’s stages, and then they had died heroically, consumed in the process of saving their friends from a horrific theater fire.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that Jyn had been living with other people at the time: she can’t associate the char and bitterness of burned wood with the stage, or with the memories of her parents.

And now she dances not to honor his memory or hers: she dances because it is what she knows of herself.

The black tutu and the crown in the box: the outfit of the Black Swan.

Black Swan here on the table, and White Swan already hanging -– protected in plastic and thin linen -– on the nearby clothes rack.

The extra item in each ensemble is a stole that she’s supposed to be wearing from loops tied around her wrists, embroidered lines tracing feathery wings.

She picks up the stole in the box, edged in black and silver, and suddenly a single tear drops onto the cloth. Is quickly absorbed.

She throws the stole back down and reaches for a grubby handkerchief from her backpack.

Cries.

The words that are coming out of her are muffled by the handkerchief:

“Mama. Papa.”

Tears come and go. She knows that much at least. She remembers dancing the last act of _La Bayadère_ with her tears falling into her bodice, but she couldn’t let anyone know that she’d just had her heart broken in real life. And in any case she’d been hard-eyed and clear-minded and stone-cold sober for the curtain calls.

So she cries, economically. Swiftly. Furtively.

And the distractions of her mind and of her memories are washed away in her own saltwater.

She strips, methodically. Dresses in the Black Swan’s finery. The bodice is like armor, tight around her chest, tight around her ribs. Tutu and stole and crown. Most people dancing the part of the Black Swan wear flesh-colored tights and shoes, but not in this performance: Jyn rolls up the tights edged in trails of stark crimson, and ties on the pointe shoes with their black ribbons and their crimson soles.

A glance in the mirror so she can swipe away the remnants of her tears.

Not much of a difference between ballet and martial arts, sometimes, she thinks as she stalks onto the stage.

The rest of the company is already arrayed on the benches, and all eyes turn away from the woman in the stern white suit who is sitting front row center, the artistic director of the company: all eyes turn towards Jyn, and she doesn’t meet any of them. Just moves past them, carrying the weight and the power of unseen wings behind her.

A storming stop next to the man in the leather bracers. Jyn doesn’t sit down; she places her hand on his shoulder instead, and lifts: up and onto her shoes.

When he places his hand atop hers, she leans toward him, just a little, just to let him know she’s leaning.

And the woman in white clears her throat and says, “Well, I was going to make a speech but it looks like you two are ready. Everyone off the stage, please.”

Jyn pivots smoothly to her right, just in time to watch Cassian slide neatly from the bench and to one knee.

Familiar notes in a famous pas de deux.

And before they take their first steps, Cassian smiles, and whispers to her:

“Trust me.”

She falls out of character for only a moment: and she darts forward to kiss him. 

Someone in the audience laughs, but not unkindly.

“You and me,” she says. “Shall we fly?”

She treasures his answer: a radiant smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Prompt Twelve: "distraction" at [@rebelcaptainprompts](https://rebelcaptainprompts.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr. 
> 
> I am also on tumblr myself -- look me up [@ninemoons42](https://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)


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